A week of ups and downs

The last week has been full of ups and downs, and I'm looking forward to getting back into the ol' daily routine now that the kiddos are back in school. Yesterday I spent the afternoon making a gingerbread house with my daughter and a gingerbread train with my son. I'm really trying to cherish each and every moment with my family - even the daily stuff.

During Thanksgiving week, a very dear family friend died in a horrible fishing accident. It was a total shock, because he went fishing practically every week and was in familiar waters. I'm horrible at making sympathy cards, but wanted to pop something in mail to his wife and son.

I always seem to reach for this tulip set by Stampin Up when I need a sympathy card.I used a pattern from SU's "Urban Oasis" pack and paired it with some Riding Hood Red cardstock and grey ribbon.

I used black ink for all of the tulip images and just stamped off on scrap paper when I needed a lighter shade.
I finished it off with a sentiment banner and some half-back pearls.

In brighter news, I have a couple of fun announcements that I'll be sharing with you in the next few weeks, so stay tuned :-) Thanks bunches for stopping by my corner of the world today - it means a lot! Have a super Monday and go hug someone you love.

Christmas Stampin' All Year Long

Have you started your Christmas cards yet? I have a whole basket that is filling up quite nicely. This week the Christmas Stampin All Year Long gals have a technique challenge for you.

Paper piecing - my most favorite technique in all the land!
I thought this image by My Favorite Things would be a good one to use for this challenge. Here's a close up of the chair that I paper pieced.
I drew in a wood floor again, because I was so happy with the way my other one turned out. It's really simple to do. You can check out my tutorial here if you're interested in trying it.

Well, I guess that's it for me today. I hope you make some time to play along with us this week. You can leave a link to your creation on the CSAYL blog. If you're looking for more challenges, be sure to check out the Hambo sketch challenge for May and the Little C's embossing challenge too!

Christmas Stampin' All Year Long

It's time for another challenge over at the CSAYL blog. My Christmas card collection is coming along nicely, how about you? The challenge this week is to make an easel card.

They look a little intimidating at first, but they are SO simple to make. You can check out a tutorial here to get you started.

Here's what I came up with...
I love non-traditional colors for Christmas, and this double-sided paper by BasicGrey was perfect for the look I was going for. The sketch this week over at Mojo Monday was a great starting point for me and really got those creative juices flowing.

I finished it off with some GINORMOUS striped ribbon and then glued a cute felt button in the middle.

The most important part of an easel card is the inside. You need to have some kind of embellishment to hold up the front of your card when it's displayed. I decided to use a button. You could also use a brad, a rhinestone or a sentiment popped up with a dimensional.

I made the ric-rac strip with my new punch from EK Success - love it!! You'll definitely be seeing more of that on future projects :-)

I hope you're inspired to play along with us this week. A big thanks to all of the ladies that participated in our sketch challenge last week. I loved looking at all of your cute creations!

Christmas Stampin All Year Long

The start of the week brings another great challenge from the CSAYL blog! This week our challenge is to use the "spotlight" technique. If you're not familiar with it, there's a great tutorial about it here.

This is only the second time I've used this technique, but I was pretty happy with my end result. Here's what I came up with...

I really wanted the technique to take center stage, so I kept the card base mostly white. The image and sentiment are from "Merry Christmas" by My Favorite Things. I added some Doodlebug sugar coating and bling to the tree for a little holiday sparkle.


I hope you can play along with us. I love looking at all of your creations for each challenge! Last week, we had a lot of cute entries for the sketch challenge, but this one by Traci was my favorite. Keep up the great work and don't forget to upload your creation to the CSAYL challenge post!

Playing with my Prismacolors

I've been really busy the last two days prepping for my class this weekend. I'm really excited about the projects and can't wait to show them to you. Hopefully I'll get a chance to take some pictures of them tomorrow.

In between prepping for class and loads of laundry, I managed to sit down and play with my new Prismacolor pencils. Thanks to all of you who left me tips on my blog and SCS!

So...do any of you have a stamp that you just HAD to have, but then you got it home and it just wasn't workin' for ya? This image by Inkadinkado has been so difficult for me to use. I've tried coloring it in with watercolor pencils, Copics and re-inkers and a aquapainter. Nothing seemed to come out that was worth keeping. I thought this stamp would be the perfect test for my new Prismacolors. The only scrap of paper that I had on hand at the time was watercolor paper, but I still was able to get an idea of what these babies can do!